Diversity in Literacy

Confusion in reading discipline specific texts.

Literacy was once thought of as "the English teacher's responsibility". Moje brings this to our attention within the first few pages of her article. English teachers want to teach themes, content, and rhetoric, not reading in writing in other disciplines (Moje, 98). Then who's responsibility is it? From my experience in high school, you went into a science class to learn science, not sit there and write a five paragraph essay on your feelings about a reading. I sat through science classes where the teacher lectures, I take notes, and the bell rings, and repeat. When I went to my english class, I learned how to write properly in english by means of sentence structure, spelling, grammar, etc. I did not learn any of this in my science, history, or math classes. It simply was not taught nor brought to anyone's attention. Reading and writing was for english class and that's that.

However, after reflecting on the readings and class discussions from Monday, I have come to realize students need to be literate in every subject; literacy means more than just reading and writing, it's the understanding of the material in which the student is engaged in. How can we expect students to become fluent in science, history,  or math without being able to read in these subjects? After all, all of us are considered experts in our respective fields because we can read and write similar to others in our disciplines. A chemist will write using chemistry knowledge, verbs, nouns, and expressions, for example, which are different than those used in biology, physics, or history. One would not expect a historian to write exactly the same as a physicist much as I am not expected to write about a biology topic with a background in chemistry. If we are expecting students to write as scientists in a science course, but leave the reading and writing to the english department, how do we every expect them to become fluent in these subjects? History teachers should teach how to read and write as a historian, science teachers as scientist, math teachers as mathematicians.

The silo affect in a figurative sense.

However, as we come to understand the importance of discipline specific literacy, we cannot narrow ourselves as educators to ignore the literacy teachings of other subjects. As pointed out, some subjects may be working to teach students similar techniques with respect to reading in their discipline. For example, I noticed historians look at authorship in a similar manner as I would when reading a chemistry text. While historians may weigh authorship in a different light than I would, the idea is similar. When we work towards a common goal, here student literacy, but ignore the workings of another department, we enact the silo affect, as the industry calls it. The thoughts behind this affect is completing your work and then throwing it over a fence (figuratively speaking) without regard of who handles it or the next process requirements. Another way of looking at this idea can be simply put as tunnel vision; you focus only on your teaching. As educators, we must work together, share our ideas, and communicate how we are teaching literacy in our disciplines to find similarities. If we are able to find common ground in our discipline specific literacy teachings, we will not add to the confusion of our students, bur reinforce ideas across disciplines.

I feel the importance of introducing students to discipline specific texts while in high school will better prepare them for college. I may have taken advanced placement classes while in my final years of high school, but these courses only introduced me to the content, not how to read academic texts within them. This skill was learned in college, but should have been in place before this point. If we can introduce students how to read and write in our disciplines, we can start to have them think as if they were scientists, historians, english scholars, and mathematicians. These skills, if learned early, will help students prepare for college and increase their ability to read and think as professionals.